Location of the most recent breach into Malifaux, Latest area to be occupied by the forces of Cryx, Stronghold of the Dark Legion, Homeworld of the 'Night Reapers' Space Marine Chapter, Council of Seven allocated Deadzone and the lair of some opinionated git called GMort who they let hang out with them...when he's not distracted by Steampunk, Gothic culture or Cosplay...

Sunday, 26 February 2012

I dragged my unfortunate partner and daughter to Warhammer World today to see how some friends of mine were doing in the 'Doubles' Tournament.....

The event itself has inspired several potential blog articles. At least one of which will be called 'Why scenarios from the Battle Missions book should never be used in a tournament ever'....

As i don't really want to steal my friends thunder in any way, I'll be e-mailing all the pictures I took of his last two games to him so he can turn them into Battle Reports of some kind. I'll settle for posting some slightly blurry, reflection filled pictures of the 'best painted' nominations.

Dark Eldar and Some Dark Eldar?

Dark Eldar and some NOT Dark Eldar...

Imperial Guard and Space Marines.

Orks and Orks.

Dark Eldar and Eldar...Again.....

Imperial Guard and.....Imperial Guard.....

If your first thought is 'why the fuck did most of these people bother to go to a doubles tournament when both team members were using the same codex' then we're on a similar wavelength.....They do look pretty though.....

Part of the problem with 'mono-build' codices comes from the fact that 5th Edition has certain design biases that are almost unavoidable. Not convinced...allow me to continue then...

The Big Issue - Mechanisation.

If you can't deal with vehicles then your going to lose. Certain armies are limited in the amount of anti-armour that they can include in their units and others have a similar problem of having to cram all their anti-armour into a single Force Organisation Chart slot. Tyranids have issues with their 'Elite' slots as unlike armies like Marines they can't give effective anti-armour weapons to cheap troop units. Necrons used to have a similar problem but they aren't as bad now as they were previously. The overall effect is to make a certain unit obligatory in a certain 'slot' with no effective alternative being available without reducing your armies effectiveness.

Other Issues.

Certain armies are more commonly seen than others. If you can't kill Marines then your average game is going to be disappointing. This forces the competitive gamer to include in his lists solutions for dealing with common threats (which is obviously quite sensible) but has the same effect of making all armies look the same as edition biases and poor codex design.

Variations of these issues apply to virtually every codex. The ones that only have minor issues can still be used to create a wide variety of viable armies...others not so much...

I'm going to be doing a series of articles over the next week or so on those armies that are unfortunate enough to be planted firmly in the 'mono' category and try to crowbar whatever flexibility into those codices that I can.

Friday, 24 February 2012

I kinda like these but they're not exactly going to see any regular use imo.

Forge World Newsletter #297

17/02/12

Hi there,
We have some amazing additions to our terrain range to tell you about in this week’s newsletter as well as details of a new Warhammer 40,000 experimental rules expansion, available to download now from our website, which allows players to enter the brutal and vicious battlefields of the Zone Mortalis.Realm of Battle Zone Mortalis Complex
The cities and starships of the Imperium are often ancient and crumbing edifices, constructed in ages past from prefabricated STC designs from the Dark Age of Technology. In a galaxy beset by war any building or corridor may be pressed into service as a strongpoint. Abrupt corners and shadowed alcoves typify the interior workspaces, while the narrow corridors and indeed larger internal rooms can be sealed off by great plasteel blast doors.

The Realm of Battle Zone Mortalis Alpha Complex, Beta Complex, Delta Complex and Gamma Complex are each 1' x 1' (300mm x 300mm) tiles that are fully compatible and interchangeable with each other. These detailed hollow resin tiles, designed by Blake Spence, are perfect for playing games using the Zone Mortalis Warhammer 40,000 Expansion rules, a link to which is provided later in this newsletter.

The Realm of Battle Zone Mortalis Set contains all four of the individual tiles, allowing for a huge range of possible corridor arrangements covering a total area of 2' x 2' (600mm x 600mm).

This new scenery range is infinitely expandable, and we plan to release more tiles and interior scenery pieces in the near future. We will also be releasing two sets of removable blast doors to accompany these new terrain tiles in the next few weeks.

These fantastically detailed terrain pieces are available to order now for immediate despatch, and to illustrate the awesomeness of the Zone Mortalis scenery, we’ve recorded a video to give you a closer look at them.

Warhammer 40,000 'Zone Mortalis' Expansion
Forge World is proud to present a brand new experimental rules expansion, dealing with some of the most savage arenas of combat conceivable in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; the battlefields the Codex Tactica Imperialis refers to as ‘Zone Mortalis’ - the fatal ground. Such areas, be they the contested decks of a void warship, tangled mine works, lightless underhives or sacred catacombs, all have a confluence of factors in common. They are closely confined, provide limited opportunity for ambushes or escape routes, as well as oft-times being treacherous, warp-tainted or toxic beyond the limits of the mortal condition.

These rules offer the chance to fight desperate battles of your own on such deadly ground and draw heavily upon the Boarding Assault rules previously published in Imperial Armour Volume 9: The Badab War Part One, and the feedback we have had from players. Zone Mortalis battles are unashamedly fatal and chaotic affairs (as fighting in a collapsing hive city under mass artillery bombardment, or on a burning star vessel in the middle of a space battle ought to be!).

Forge World Events News:Forge World Open Day 2012, 1st April, Warhammer World, Nottingham
Sunday 1st April will see Forge World and Warhammer Forge abandon our top-secret Manufactorum for our annual Open Day. This year’s event is even bigger and better than ever, as we will be taking over not only the Gaming Hall for our Sales stand but also the GW staff restaurant for our Studio staff and their displays.

We’ll be bringing you more details about the event in future newsletters. For now, we can whet your appetite with a few teasers: there will be two brand new participation games and as many of our detailed display boards as we can cram into the Studio area. We also intend to run a ‘Studio Café’ Q&A session in addition to showcasing a vast array of work-in-progress miniatures, future releases and some of the superbly painted models we use in our displays.

Our Sales stand will be packed with a huge selection of resin kits, books and modelling supplies, including a veritable cornucopia of pre-release kits that we’ll be announcing in future newsletters. As always the Open Day will be the first chance to purchase our 2012 Event Only models. We’ve designed both a Warhammer Forge model and a Forge World model once again, and while we can’t tell you what they are just yet, suffice to say we think they’re great!

AdeptiCon 2012, 19th to 22nd April, Westin Lombard Yorktown Center, Chicago
Forge World will again be attending AdeptiCon this year, and we are now accepting reservation orders for this popular event. While we will be bringing a huge selection of our range of books, resin kits and modelling products, placing a reservation order is the best way to ensure that we have exactly what you want packed up and waiting for you at the show.

You can either telephone us on 011 44 115 900 4995, or send an e-mail entitled ‘AdeptiCon 2012 Reservation’ to forgeworldreservations@games-workshop.co.uk. We will need your name, a list of the items that you wish to order, and a contact e-mail address for yourself. In the week prior to the event, we will send you a confirmation e-mail containing your order number, details of any items that are unavailable, and a total cost in US$ (less local sales tax) that will be payable at the event.